Cyber Governance and Policy Center Partners with Cyber Peace Institute

We are pleased to share the good news that the Cyber Governance and Policy Center at the University of Oklahoma is an inaugural university partner of the Cyber Peace Institute (CPI). The CPI is a non-governmental organization devoted to ensuring and enhancing the stability of cyberspace. Our center is one of only four university-based organizations in the world that are inaugural partners, alongside the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University, the École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne, and a research group on the Geopolitics of the Datasphere (GEODE) at University Paris 8. We are excited to see the University of Oklahoma gaining recognition as a global center of excellence on cyber governance and policy issues. In the remainder of this blog post, we want to share more about the CPI’s mission and values, and say a little more about how we plan to play a role in its work.

The CPI seeks to accomplish its mission by performing three core functions. It will provide assistance to the most vulnerable victims of sophisticated cyberattacks, and will play a coordinating function in incident response and recovery. It will facilitate research on cyberattacks, in order to ensure more and better data that is available to all actors. And, finally, it will promote positive and responsible behavior in cyberspace by pursuing research and advocacy efforts to improve global cybersecurity norms and rules.

The institute’s initial funders include Microsoft, Mastercard and the Hewlett Foundation, with support from other corporations and foundations. A full list of its leadership, funders and partners can be found here. The institute’s governance model is designed to ensure its independence both from these core funders and partners, as well as from other corporate and governmental entities engaged in cybersecurity policy. Its core values include neutrality, transparency, integrity and inclusiveness. While the institute is at the beginning of its life, and a great deal remains to be done, we are convinced that it represents a worthwhile effort to advance important global discussions on cybersecurity policy.

While the affiliate faculty of the Cyber Governance and Policy Center include University of Oklahoma faculty are drawn from a range of disciplines, our expertise and focus is primarily on issues of global governance, international law and organization, and international security. As a result, our initial focus will be on the institute’s third work stream, which pertains to research and advocacy on international norms and rules pertaining to cybersecurity.

Such rules are essential to the operation, stability and security of the global Internet, since the Internet is a highly decentralized and largely privatized network of networks. Many thousands of entities all across the globe are authorized to make decisions about how they operate their own computer networks, hardware and software; and various governments across the planet (at federal, state and local levels) also play key roles in cybersecurity governance and policy efforts. The decisions these actors make can have serious consequences for other firms and governments, and for individual Internet users. It is unrealistic and unnecessary for each of these actors to coordinate and harmonize their policies in all respects, but it is essential that there be some basic coordination on crucial technological and policy issues. It is also essential that there are robust, legitimate and relatively effective dispute-resolution procedures in the event that one actor’s decisions have negative effects on other stakeholders.

The good news is that the academic field of International Relations has an extensive body of research from other international security issues, including nuclear deterrence and arms control; the international law of sovereignty, self-defense, state responsibility and other related topics; and international humanitarian and human rights law. We believe that our knowledge of these issues can be productively brought to bear on the unique and challenging problems posed by global cybersecurity governance and policy. Over the coming years, we look forward to working with the Cyber Policy Institute and its partners, to conduct and share research on existing institutions and processes for global cybersecurity governance, with an eye to improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of these mechanisms. Our hope is that in doing so, we can play a role in helping the institute to accomplish its important mission of ensuring and enhancing the stability, security and freedom of cyberspace.